Obscurantism, Tyranny, and the Fallacy of Either Black Or White

FORUM Obscurantism, Tyranny, and the Fallacy of Either Black or White RALPH ESTLING t is no coincidence that the world's external appearance and first great popularizer of totalitarian- Inner Truth, The Good ism was also the first great Essence and its bad shadow, I the Divine Inexpressible and spokesman in the West of Philosophical Idealism, the doctrine which preaches the sublunary meat and pota- that the everyday horrors with which toes. As Bergen Evans reminds us men beset mankind are of no real conse- in The Natural History of Nonsense, quence or significance, are indeed "Obscurantism and tyranny go nonexistent, illusions, figments of our together. The mist of mysticism own perverted outlook created by our has always provided good cover for blinded, crippled senses. It was Plato those who do not want their actions who advocated the "Noble Lie," the lie too closely looked into." the ruler, the Philosopher King, would This danger inherent in obscuran- broadcast to the ruled, always of course tism is not merely of theoretical inter- for the ruled's own good. est. Martin Heidegger, Carl Jung, Rulers of church and state, the sem- Konrad Lorenz, Alexis Carrel, Ezra piternal Establishment of this world, Pound, Louis Ferdinand Celine, D.H. have always seen things in this congenial Lawrence, and T.S. Eliot were all highly light, the light that Plato ignited for intelligent and, at least two of them, them 2,400 years ago. No doubt they humane, kind, and thoroughly decent still would have if Plato had never lived, men. Yet all experienced no trouble what- on- XMODtKBK but with Plato as their Authority, the soever in embracing a strong element of argument that pain and injustice are fascism to his heart, this after a lifetime nor the State, nor this Faction nor that unreal, mere images and imaginings, spent in the contemplation and evocation Party, nor God, nor the Holy Mother gains repute, upstanding, righteousness, of obscurantism. Once one has developed Church, nor the Prophet of God, nor and, above all, philosophical status. the habit of abjuring the rational in favor Right, Freedom, Equality, Justice, and All dictatorships that have emerged of the willfully obscure and mystical, the the Brotherhood of Man—but for in the West since 350 B.C. are a mete descent to the bottom of the night is an myself, for my own good, because it pleases me to do so. exegesis on Plato, the man who wrote easy ride. that laughter is undignified, who chose Obscurantism is ten parts humbug, Only in the name of humbug shall Sparta rather than Athens; and on and humbug is Tyranny's first name, the Tyranny declare itself, at least in its more Philosophical Idealism, which is noth- one it has chosen for itself and by which public utterances. Privately, in its own ing more than an attempt to divide it is known to all its closer acquain- house. Tyranny may unbutton its vest, Existence itself into two unequal parts, tances. Was there one honest tyrant ever, put on its slippers, and call itself hon- was there one, who said, I have taken esdy enough, though even of this we Ralph Estling writes from Ilminster, charge and mean to keep it for the good cannot be sure. But whenever it broad- Somerset, England. of myself. Not for the sake of the People, casts its message it uses only its first 6 0 September/October 2004 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER FORUM name, humbug, just as any king or only wish this binary reasoning, this exploited and the exploiter, the gifted emperor, as if it had no parents, no plus-or-minus-and-no-nonsense-please and die dull-witted, inductive analysis ancestry, but had sprung, full- approach to things applied in social sit- and hypothetico-deductivism, die jusdy panoplied, out from the skull of God. uations, would end somewhere between rich and the deservedly poor, the black But it is not only obscurantism that our twelfth and sixteenth birthdays. and white. Us and Them. Pluralism forms a smokescreen behind which The ability to see the world, its mean- remains a luxury that only a few minds tyranny can hide. There is also the little ing, and its humanity, in strict dualistic can afford, or even window-shop for. matter of dividing all existence into two, terms, as two, and only two, distinct and Susan Stebbing in her Thinking to and just two, totally opposed, totally mutually exclusive entities, forms die Some Purpose has named this Manichaean style of dichotomizing the fallacy of either black or white. It is the logical absurdity that assumes we cannot The ability to see the world, its meaning and be logical unless we deal with precisely definable characteristics, thus ignoring its humanity, in strict dualistic terms, as two, the fact that a clear distinction is not nec- and only two, distinct and mutually exclusive essarily a sharp distinction. The fallacy states, in effect, that in order to be nice entities, forms the backdrop and backbone and logical we are forced, by the dictates of virtually every human enterprise that of logic themselves, to draw a definite line somewhere in an infinite series— has led to disintegration or petrification ranging from absolute black, through all of society or the individual. possible gradations of gray, down to absolute white—at the precise point where black changes to white, and that to refuse to do so labels us as illogical and opposite categories. People from whom backdrop and backbone of almost all unclear thinkers, or worse, cowards and we might expect better reasoning religion, philosophy, politics, economics, equivocators, who insist on not drawing processes to be in evidence surprise us law, sociology, psychology—indeed vir- distinctions between Black and White. by their unexpected lack in perspicuity. tually every human enterprise that has This line of reasoning confuses Sociologists and psychologists tell us led to disintegration or petrification of thinking clearly with drawing sharp dis- about "dominant" or "leader" types, society or the individual. Plato or tinctions. It should not be necessary to "dominated" or "follower" types, implic- Aristotle, St. Augustine or Descartes, point out that the one does not perforce idy or very often explicitly inquiring of Calvin or Torquemada, Freud or Jung, imply the other, that thinking can be us which we would rather be, implying Nietzsche or Baudelaire, Eysenck or very clear indeed even when sharp divi- through it all that of course our choice, Skinner, Stalin or Hitler, no matter in sions cannot be made and, often assuming nature allows us to have one— what specifics they may have differed enough, it is only clear thinking that which is another kettle of red herring— one from the other, agree that everything tells us so in these cases. To divide an should be to lead, to command, to dom- is to be divided into Two, which, what- infinite, or at least very long and com- inate, to impose our wills and our con- ever they choose to call diem, can be plex, series into two distinct parts which cepts on others, for their own good of reduced to a common denominator: the are then to be placed in total opposition course, to win friends and influence saved and die unsaved, those on God's to each other is not a sign of good logic. people. This "either/or" insistence by side and those on Satan's, the abstrac- No one over the age of sixteen has the supposedly intelligent and mentally tions of the pure reasoner and the con- right to be that naive. skilled professionals is deeply worrying. creusms of die pure observer, the totally The purposefully obscure, the delib- It never seems to occur to these highly sensory and the completely analytic, the erately oversimplified either-or act of trained experts on human behavior that blessed and the damned, the holy and illogic, each has its apotheosis in the only sensible answer to the query, die infidel, the material and the spiritual, tyranny, either mental or physical, Do you wish to be a leader or follower, a the mind and die heart, wave and parti- always spiritual. And it is the only form master or a slave, is: What sane person cle, holism and reductionism, nature and of tyranny in which we are likely to would want to be either! nurture, the Hellenic and the Hebraic, forge our own chains, to wrap ourselves Dividing everything into two is all the superman and the herd, the in them, and then throw away the key, right in die monkey house, the sandbox, Romanticist and the Classicist, die repre- proclaiming all the while our total and and the digital computer, but one can sentational and the symbolic, the ineluctable devotion to freedom. 6 2 September/October 2004 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER .

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